Listening to music inspires us to take action. Upon hearing an I.E.—Instant Ear-worm—we must then determine the best way we can go about listening to it again (and again) at our convenience. Prior to the free-for-all streaming era, our I.E. follow-through measures typically meant seeking out a specific playback medium for our favorite music, initially based on budgetary constraints. In those formative, pre-employment preteen years, 45s—and/or, depending on how far back we're talking here, possibly even 78s—fit the literal dollar bill before we could afford to move up…
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The British audio scene from the late 1970s through the mid-1980s was pretty strange. Audio as a hobby was a big deal, with widespread appeal to a much younger crowd than today. Audiophiles were guided by a flurry of what my friends called "hi-fi pornos," audio magazines that filled the racks at the newsagents.
Far more than you see today, there was a strong nationalist bent, with some writers displaying an open bias against anything that wasn't British. Magazines' editorial departments presented readers with a clear, specific doctrine of how a system should be built and what components…
Franc Kuzma's most recent breakthrough came when he began to experiment with the extreme stiffness and favorable resonant properties of sapphire. Back in the '80s at Sound By Singer, with the original Stogi arm, we would joke that stogi was the Slovenian spelling of stogie, referring to its cigar-shaped armtube. Franc Kuzma, though, says that stogi is the Slovenian word for rigid or stiff (footnote 2), a key principle behind Kuzma's designs and the catalyst for his decision to explore sapphire for the armtube. For the Safir 9, Kuzma uses a single tapered piece of lab-grown sapphire. Its…
Updated 2/20/2025 (previously 2/12/25)
In a Connecticut courtroom on Wednesday, Kristofer D'Agostino, son of late Krell owner and CEO Rondi D'Agostino, won control over his own trust, opening a path for Krell to begin to get its ducks in a row and, if all goes well, reopen.
This was a probate hearing, intended to establish who would control the D'Agostino trust. Wil Buhler of "family holding company" JF Bicking had put forward a motion to have a third party administer the trust. Buhler apparently didn't know that the proposed third-party administrator had already notified the…
Many connections
After leaving it running for a few days in the office, I moved the EXN100 upstairs into my reference system. My usual Bowers & Wilkins 808 speakers were not installed; instead I was using a pair of Amphion Krypton3X's; look for my review in the June issue. The big Amphions have the same sharp-focus top end and midrange as their baby cousins down in my office, plus a big, full, fast low end courtesy of their 10" woofers and large floorstanding cabinets.
Upstairs, I tested various connections to the EXN100. I plugged in a USB flash drive stick filled with…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Streaming D/A processor. Inputs: Ethernet, USB-A 2.0 (for attached storage), USB-B asynchronous (computer connection), 1 S/ PDIF on RCA, 1 optical S/PDIF on TosLink, HDMI-eARC. Outputs: Line Out (1 pair XLR balanced, 1 pair RCA unbalanced); Digital Out resolution: S/PDIF on RCA up to 24/192, TosLink up to 24/96. DAC: ESS ES9028Q2M. Frequency response: 20Hz–75kHz +0/–1dB. THD at 1kHz, 0dBFs: <0.0005%. Crosstalk at 1kHz: <–120dB. S/N ratio (ref. 1V): >120dB. Ethernet connectivity: IEEE 802.3, 10 Base-T or 100 Base-T. Wi-Fi connectivity: IEEE…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Digital sources: dCS Bartók streaming DAC, Oppo UDP-203 universal disc player.
Preamplifier: Benchmark LA-4.
Power amplifier: Benchmark AHB2.
Integrated amplifier: McIntosh MA6500.
Loudspeakers: Amphion Krypton3X, Amphion One18.—Tom Fine
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I performed a full set of measurements on the Cambridge EXN100 using my Audio Precision SYS2722 system, repeating some of the testing with the magazine's higher-performance APx555 analyzer. I used network data streamed with Roon, USB data sourced from my MacBook Pro, and optical S/PDIF data—the TosLink input accepted data sampled at rates up to 192kHz. I adjusted the processor's settings with the StreamMagic V3.0.0 app, installed on my iPad mini. Apple's USB Prober utility identified the Processor as "EXN100" from "Cambridge Audio," with the serial number string "…
The usual Specifications sidebar in this review is a nuts-and-bolts listing of the electrical and physical properties of the Technics SC-CX700 loudspeaker ($2999.99/pair), who made it and where, and a widely varying amount of information about its electrical and acoustical performance. The information comes from the included literature, available downloads, and whatever I could find on the manufacturer's website.
Note the complete absence of the usual technical information about the design or construction of the coaxial driver or about the crossover frequency and slope. Missing, too, are…
Before leaving the nuts-and-bolts section of this review, let's deal with the subwoofer output. There is only one, it is on the primary speaker, and it supplies a L/R mix. Even when the sub is switched on, the CX700s play full range, and when one performs the "Auto" or "Measured" calibration, the sub is not included. This means that the CX700s do not benefit from increased output/headroom by sending low frequencies to the sub, and that the sub does not benefit from excellent EQ features. The Technics manual says "For details, refer to the operating instructions of the connected device,"…